Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Perhaps one of the most used application in all offices and businesses is the spreadsheet program. As always, Microsoft Excel is the big daddy of all spreadsheet programs. Infact, you will hardly see any other spreadsheet application on a computer other than Excel. That's partly because not too many good spreadsheet programs are available, and partly because Excel comes along with Microsoft Office which again is the most used office suite. So today we are going to look beyond Excel and see what free alternatives are available for us.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager that runs right on your browser. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it's easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Softwares cost money. We all like to use big softwares, but since they come with a high price tag we tend resort to pirated or cracked copies of the software, which is too bad. So when software publishers give away full commercial softwares for free, as a part of their promotional campaign, we shouldn't miss it. It gives us a chance to own paid softwares for free legitimately. Today I'm going to bring you 8 such softwares that are given away free for a limited time period. These aren't some useless or worthless softwares that nobody uses, rather they are some of the finest softwares that you could find. So get them before the offer expires.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Do you have any important data in an optical disc that you can't retrieve because the disc is scratched? Have you ever tried copying movies from a DVD only to find that it stops at 98%? And when you click Cancel, the whole file disappears. I have a solution to all of these problems.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

DivXMachine is a software to convert videos into divX ( and some other formats) that completely integrates with the Windows' shell. You just have to select the videos you want to convert, right click and then choose the options from the context menu that pops out.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Do you know that you can run Windows applications without having Windows on your system? Yes, that's what ReactOS is.

ReactOS is an advanced free open source operating system providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

You probably know what a Service Pack is. A service pack (in short SP) is a collection of updates, fixes and/or enhancements to a software program delivered in the form of a single installable package. Installing a service pack is easier and less error-prone than installing a high number of patches individually, even more so when updating multiple computers over a network.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The following list contains more than 100 sites where you can find thousands of Photoshop tutorials. Bookmark this page and you will never have to look anywhere else for Photoshop tutorials. So without wasting any more time, let's get to the good stuff.

If you have seen Windows Vista's new way of navigating folders in explorer you will definitely agree that it's the best and quickest way to do it. Now you can have this same "breadcrumb" navigation in Windows XP with Explorer Breadcrumbs.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

There is an old saying -"Prevention is better than cure". Before your precious laptop actually gets stolen why not take some steps to make it difficult for the thief to steal it? When you are in a public space like a library you are usually hesitant to leave your laptop for a few minutes, afraid that someone will take your laptop. Now there is a simple and free solution to this problem!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

A lot of multimedia content on the Internet is in the form of flash files or SWF files. Animation, either interactive or non-interactive, games and small movies and clips are available on the net as SWF files. Often, we comes across pretty images or graphics in them or like their background music. I will show how you can extract those images and audio files from within the SWF files.

To do that we will need a software called Camouflage. Don't worry, it's free. Camouflage allows you to hide files by scrambling them and then attaching them to the file of your choice. This camouflaged file then looks and behaves like a normal file, and can be stored, used or emailed without attracting attention.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Earlier, I had shown how you can use old floppy disks to decorate the walls of your room. Today I'm going to tackle the question: What to do with useless and spare CD ROM discs? This question is often asked and discussed in computer forums across the Internet. If you are an avid computer users and in the habit of buying games CDs, music CDs etc, you too must have accumulated quite a large number of CDs. If you are looking for a way to dispose them off, then before you throw them away have a look at 101 different ways of putting them to some kind of a use. This website has all sorts of tricks that you can do with your CDs, submitted by various people. The suggestion ranges from actually useful ones to downright stupid! Here is a preview:

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

There are plenty of hard disk defragmenters available that all does the same think - defragment the hard disk (of course, duh!) But all of them are on-demand defragmenters, meaning that you have to manually launch them and start the defragmenting process. It's similar to an on-demand virus scanner. An on demand virus scanner does not continuously monitor your files for viruses. A virus can get into your system and remain on your hard disk until you start the virus scanner and start scanning for viruses. The resident program type virus scanner (the usual type), on the other hand, continuously monitors and scans your files for viruses whenever you access them. These type of anti virus programs are more efficient because it enables them to catch viruses the moment it enters the computer system and before any damage can be done. The hard disk defragmenter I'm going to present today is similar to the resident program virus scanner. It runs in the background and continuously monitors the files on your hard disk. Whenever it detects fragmentation, it defragments the file keeping your hard disk completely defragmented at all times.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Not all movies are copyrighted. Not all movies are protected under DRM. Not all movies are paid. There do exist something called free movies, that fall under public domain or under the creative commons license. These movies have no string attached. You are free to legally download, view and distribute these movies without breaking the law. Here are 10 websites where you can get some really good movies for free.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

The main reason why you would want to convert a video into a GIF animation file is to put it in your blog without streaming the video file. Not having to stream means that it will load and play in any browser and no extra video plugin is required. You can also convert your videos into GIFs and use them as avatar in online forums or put them in the profile page of a social networking site.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

World Wind is an open source, 3D interactive virtual globe software created by NASA. World Wind allows any user to zoom from outer space into any place on Earth. World Wind uses satellite imagery and elevation data to allow users to experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there. Virtually visit anyplace in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps or along the African Sahara.

Friday, November 2, 2007

If you are using a word processing application other than MS Office, then sometimes you may face a problem when somebody sends you a PowerPoint slide or an Excel sheet. Since MS Office is the most widely used word processing application, file formats like .doc (MS Word document), .ppt (PowerPoint slide) and .xls (Excel sheet) has become a sort of standard among the users. But not everybody uses MS Office. You might be using OpenOffice, StarOffice etc which might refuse to open MS Office files. To deal with this problem, Microsoft has released 3 free application to view, but not edit, PowerPoint, Word and Excel files.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Hard disk space is precious, no matter how large a hard disk you own. You have paid for it so you would want to use every bit and bytes of it. With broadband becoming cheaper and faster, the need for space is becoming even more urgent. Unfortunately, Windows has a habit of slowly eating into your hard disk space as your system gets older and soon you may find gigabytes of space mysteriously lost. When you find that happening, just look for your missing disk space at the following places.

One of the most useful application to be ever bundled with Windows is the Notepad. There is no single person who haven't used Notepad at least once. Notepad creates simple, no-frills, text files where you can scribble down small notes, to do list, website urls, anything that needs to be written down. You can open files of any extension on Notepad to view their contents. You can create your own files of any extension on Notepad too. You can copy an html code into Notepad and save it with .html and it becomes an html page. Similarly, you can copy a C program into Notepad and save it with .C to create a C program file. Indeed, it's the most versatile application ever created. How would you like to include some yet more powerful features to Notepad? Enter Notepad++.